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Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Law and Order: Justice and Lucius

No, I'm not talking about that conservative and formulaic show of yesteryear (sorry, fans... Whale Biologist), but of the political view of rigid and typically harsh punishment for crimes.

I've been a bit lax about posting to my blog lately, as I've got some rather big stuff going on in the rest of my life. Specifically, my wife and I are going to print(!) with our first graphic novel and comic, for the upcoming APE (Alternative Press Expo) convention, Comic Con's more indie San Francisco venue. We're pretty excited about this, as, being our first time in print, this is also our first convention we'll be showing at!

Back to the business at hand...

Ryle (the cheerful fellow above) is one of my favorite lesser characters from the Malifaux setting. I actually painted him for the various construct-themed groups of Malifaux, most notably the Leveticus crew I hope to eventually field, once I get a stronger grasp of the game mechanics... which is a long way of explaining why his base doesn't match any other pieces in this set.

I really enjoyed painting this mini in a near-monochrome scheme, and, while I'll probably do some later pieces in more of a steampunk brass and brown scheme, the grey mechanical feel seems very no-nonsense in a way that feels appropriate to the world setting.

I'm not sure why, but I've never seen a particularly well-photographed Ryle (including my own), which is a shame, because I really like the model: it has good detail and a very expressive pose, which generally looks more confused in pictures than the anguished expression visible in person.

While Lucius doesn't have the slightly diminutive stature that the writing on his character references to (he also has thighs that make it look like he could kick through a wall), he's one of my favorite Guild models, and part of what got me in to Malifaux.

I'm not entirely satisfied with his base, and will likely do it over again at a later point, but I felt like the red and gold came out well.

I can't offer much in the way of tactical comments on this most dapper of badasses, though am looking forward to fielding him as a challenge in the hopefully not-too-distant future.

Lucius' sinister sidekick, the Lawyer, is another one I was pretty happy with, with his grey coat and red trousers being inverted on Lucius, above. This scheme loosely matches the Guild Guards I've painted but haven't quite finished yet, making him bridge the gap between regulars and his superior.

As a note, the Lawyer's flavor text was the first time I actually laughed out loud at any character entries from any system. Malifaux has some of the most consistently entertaining flavor text I've ever read, and Storm of Shadows' (Malifaux' fourth and most recent book's) entries have continued this trend.

Lady Justice is one of my favorite characters (and pretty clearly one of Wyrd's, too), and my wife's most frequently played piece.

Because of this, she got a little extra time under the brush, and I tried a couple new techniques on this model. Because I wanted strong colors on her, I started with a lighter and more opaque base for her colors, which I've started to more regularly do, as I think it's faster and makes models' colors stronger at a distance.

Unfortunately, you can't tell that all that well (I think) from the above photo. This whole group suffered a bit from grey weather outside dulling the daylight just enough that things looked a little flat under the lights I needed to substitute it with.

The Judge. Unlike Justice, I can't blame his color (mostly the hair, I'm happy with most of the other parts) on the flat lighting, I just need to redo it. I thought the mini looks pretty nice, but not my favorite. I'll probably try to find another copy of the Judge from the Dead Justice pack and de-deadify him, as I like that pose a lot better, so I'm not overly concerned with this one...

Finally, the Death Marshals-- bossibly my favorite of Wyrd's first generation or so of minis. Back before Malifaux, when Wyrd was just a model company, I had something like a half-dozen ideas of what I could use these guys as proxies for, as they've got a ton of fun character to them, not to mention some great poses.

They still regularly make their rounds as proxy (Cygnaran) Gunmages, Imperial Guard sergeants, occasional highwaymen or helpful NPCs in RPGs, and anything else that needs to look imposing with a pistol.